The highest court in the land has moved to uphold a circuit court ruling that rejected two inventors seeking a patent on an intangible business idea. (Specifically, a method for account for weather risk in commodities trading calculations.

Last week, I wrote about the government's plan to accelerate the handout of green technology patents, because I was perplexed by the fact that more companies weren't taking advantage of the program. Apparently, according to intellectual property experts, one reason for the slow uptake has been the fact that the classification categories it covered were very limited.

Over the past several months, I've received various pitches from PR types representing intellectual property/patent lawyers focused on the green tech patent acceleration program announced by the Obama administration late last year.The idea behind that pilot was to accelerate the examination of green technology patent applications.

So it turns out that the Eco-Patent Commons, which I wrote about back in January, isn't just another empty-handed cooperative industry effort.Three new companies, Bosch, DuPont and Xerox, have joined the effort and another, Sony, has contributed an additional patent to the community.

In the scheme of green things, Dell's PowerEdge M-Series blades could be described as emerald. Now, the company is trying to make it easier for data center managers to opt for them, with a new patent-pending tool called Dell FlexAddress.

TechNet, a bipartisan, political action group of high tech senior executives that promotes the growth of technology and innovation, hosted a dinner last night in Palo Alto to discuss some of its agenda items, which have included stances on education, patent reform, stock options and broadband and Internet policy. The newest agenda, a Green Technologies Initiative, was the subject of discussion last night.